"Not much; when it comes to that I shall make a mistake in measuring my dose of chloral, and it will be 'poor Susan Amphlett, death by misadventure'!"
Susan, who had never had adventures or "affairs" of her own, was a kind of modern representative of the chorus in a Greek play, and was always explaining people, more especially her bosom friends, of whom Vera was the dearest. She was really fond of Vera, and there was no arrière pensée of envy and malice in her explanations. Her intense interest in other people may perhaps be attributed to the fact that she hardly ever opened a book—not even the novel of the season—and that her knowledge of public events was derived solely from the talk at luncheon tables.
Certainly it might be admitted, even by the malicious, that Claude and Vera were an ideal couple. They outraged all modern custom in spending the greater part of their lives in close companionship; he originating all their amusements, and she keenly interested in everything he originated.
They were happy, and they were continually telling each other how happy. They always went back to the childish days at Disbrowe.
"I feel as if all that ever happened after that was blotted out," Vera whispered, one sunlit afternoon, as they sat side by side among silken cushions on the motor launch, while all the glory of the upper Thames moved past them; "all between those summer days and these seems vague and dim: even the long years with poor Grannie. The wailing about want of money, the moaning over the things we had to do without, the people she hated because they were rich; all those years and the years that came after have gone down into the gulf of forgotten things. A dark curtain, like a pall, has fallen upon the past; and we are living in the present. We love each other, and we are together. That is enough, Claude, is it not? That is enough."
"That is enough," he echoed, smiling up at her from his lower level among the pillows. That heap of down pillows and his lounging attitude among them seemed to epitomise the man and his life. "All the same, I want Sinbad the Second to win the Leger."
"Ah, you always laugh at me," she cried, with a vexed air. "You can never be serious."
"No, I can't," he answered, with a darkening brow, and a voice that was as heavy as lead.
They were living upon the rapture of a consummated love: which is something like a rich man living upon his capital. There comes a time when he begins to ask himself how long it will last.
They had loved each other for years; first unconsciously, with a divine innocence, at least on the woman's part, then consciously, and with a vague sense of sin; and then, all obstacles being removed, triumphantly; assured of the long future, in which nothing could part them.